To escape the suffering
by Lucrecia LeVrai
Summary: An eight year old Sephiroth's attempt at suicide. Pure angst. Please, read this, I'm sure you won't be disappointed. I worked hard to create a reliable, emotional fic.


Disclaimer: I own every single word I have written here, but I do not own Sephiroth.

Author's notes: At first, I wanted this story to be merely a short flashback in the thirteenth chapter of my Aeriseph fic, but it grew longer and longer, and it somehow reached the length of an independent fiction, so I decided to post it separately.

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To escape the suffering, by Lovely Lucrecia

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Somebody once wrote that hope never dies. My hope has already died. Long ago… And I will be next.

Sephiroth carefully closed the steel door, then turned around to examine the unfamiliar room. It was just some empty lab, small and sterile. It vaguely smelled of solvents, alcohol and other chemical agents. The whiteness was overwhelming and nearly frightful, but the boy was fully used to it.

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There isn't the faintest hope that things will ever get any different, he thought._ Actually, it's next to impossible. The people that have power over my life are omnipotent. And they will never change their mind. I can't escape them. Where to? How? Sometimes I even wonder whether this… _Outside_ really exists. Maybe it's some fairy tale. Only a dream._

Sephiroth leaned against the cold, metal surface of the door and sighed. He was too slender and delicate for his age, looking as if he were being starved all the time. Which, of course, wasn't true. He got enough feed, he just constantly lacked appetite. When nobody looked, he simply threw the food away. An ordinary thing all children do.

Sephiroth was by no means an ordinary child, though he was even dressed like one at the moment. His skin was unnaturally pale, as always, and he looked as if he were going to faint all of a sudden. Silver hair grew slightly past the boy's shoulders. His green eyes were quite unnerving, too, because they actually glowed. Well, at least most of the time. In those short, rare periods when Sephiroth was free of mako poisoning, his eyes used to return to their original color; electric blue.

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Nothing is going to change… ever.

For I have begged the scientist to leave me alone. On my knees. More than once.

To no avail.

But seriously, he thought,_ there must be something wrong with _me_. I must have done some terrible thing once, something I cannot recall, but still… Nothing happens without a proper reason, right? So I must have done something really bad to deserve this. It's just that… it has never been different, actually. I don't remember having a better life _before_._

Everybody hates me and regards me with sovereign contempt. And they put me through endless, utterly pointless torture. My father…

Sephiroth paused.

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Maybe it's because I don't really love him…? Like I know I should? I tried. I really, really tried to be good. I did my best to be obedient, not to complain, not to anger him, not to bother him when he is busy, to refrain from questions…

But I simply cannot love him. Which is so… wrong. He's the only family I have, since my mother is long dead, and I'm not even able to love him…

Which probably means I'm a horrible child. It's all my own fault.

Yes. Everything's my own fault.

The boy's hands began to shake slightly, but his delicate face remained expressionless. Altogether, he resembled a porcelain doll. A white, perfect and motionless figure.

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I can't stand this nightmare any longer. I have to end it once and for all. The things they do to me everyday… they will eventually kill me, it's pretty obvious.And I don't want to die a slow and painful death at their hands. I can choose my own way instead.

I'm so much tired of everything…

He walked up to a tray, where several surgical instruments lay. All of them were perfectly clean and ready to use. Sephiroth picked up a scalpel. He could have seen his reflection in its smooth surface, but he didn't even bother to look. He just moved a few steps away from the tray and sat down, clutching the scalpel in his left hand, staring ahead at a snow-white wall.

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I wonder… will somebody even get worried? Father would be furious, that's for sure… but worried?

I'm not turning back, no matter what.

The hard floor felt chilly to the touch.

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I've broken quite a few rules by coming here. I should be practicing right now… my instructor is probably looking for me at the moment, cursing, calling names and such. But he will never find me in this room. Nobody will. They will never think of coming up here_, of all places. Nobody has seen me on my way… and they will never think that I would come to the lab _of my own free will_._

Sephiroth took a deep breath, but he didn't actually need to calm down. He was tranquil enough. And determined.

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Alright… It's supposedly the first conscious decision in my entire life. I still have this little power over myself left.

The child slowly cut his wrist with the razor-sharp scalpel.

It didn't hurt… much. Actually… it didn't hurt at all. Besides, the pain was nothing new. It was always something he was oh-so-familiar with…

The thin trickle of blood ran down his wrist, staining the smooth, pale skin. His blood was red, which slightly amused him. He was only eight years old and already knew what bitter irony was.

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Funny, he nearly smiled. _It's not that I haven't seen it before, but I always expect it to be green. Just like the liquid they force into my veins…_

Sephiroth winced at the horrifying, vivid memory, his set expression finally breaking into that of pain; lips twisted, jaw twitching, eyes closely shut.

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Every time it's a pure agony… And it's not that they plan to stop it someday, he reminded himself. _That's why I have to put an end to it myself…_

The blood had almost stopped running by now. The boy focused on his wrist once more. The small wound was already healing before his very eyes. He found it irritating

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Is it going to be that difficult?

This time I have to cut myself deeper, I guess, the boy resolved. However, he suddenly hesitated.

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Wait. Do I really want to do this?

Do I really have no future…? Father says I do have one. A glorious one. I sometimes want to laugh in his face - not that I would ever actuallydare_ to do this - and tell him he has to be wrong. I _know_ he is wrong. What future can _I_ possibly have? I've never left this place in my entire life… and I never will, most probably. He says I will, though, and snaps at me to be more patient. But… what if it's just another one of his lies…?_

He has never once told me he is my father. But I know. I'm neither naive, nor blind. I can see the way some people look at us. I can hear them whispering… I have never heard anybody mentioning it directly, but… I have a mind of my own. I can read between the lines when I have to.

No, the boy realized with a striking certainty. _My father is not going to care… After all, he never does. Yes, he would be enraged, very angry with me for doing such a foolish thing; he'll probably fire my caretaker or something… Oh, well. He's not going to miss me, anyway. Not that I care, either…_

But Sephiroth really cared, cared so much that it hurt. Actually, I hurt him much more than anything else. Much, much more that the physical abuse. He didn't even realized that, but he was trying to commit suicide not out of some deep desire to end his miserable life. He merely wanted his father… someone, for crying out loud, to notice him. To see the suffering he went through. To realize that he, too, had emotions. Just like everybody else. Just like any normal human did.

This time, the boy cut himself very hard, almost to the bone. And he opened his veins on the other hand, too. The blood ran faster now. Life was slowly draining out of Sephiroth's body. The child's soft face got even paler than it usually was.

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Professor Gast used to care once. While he was still alive and in Midgar, that is. But he left two years ago without even saying goodbye and I've never seen him again. That woman, Ifalna, stole him away from me.

I hate her. I hate, really, really hate her.

He clenched his hands into fists, shaking with anger and disappointment. He was alone in the room. Nobody was watching him being so pathetically weak.

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He should have stayed here with me! He was my friend, mine only, not hers! He was mine and belonged to me! I loved him more that she_ did! And I needed him so much more!_

Proving that he had indeed inherited much of Hojo's temper, he grabbed the scalpel with his sticky hand and flung it at the wall as hard as he could. He nearly expected the tool to shatter, but his body had already grew weaker by now, so the knife left merely a bloody imprint on the wall, smearing the red liquid everywhere as it fell down.

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And now he's dead and I will never see him again. Oh, well. I will never see anybody_ again. Which is _just fine_. Perfect._

He hung his head; silver hair instantly fell into his eyes, obscuring his view. He had to close them, anyway, as he was beginning to feel a little bit dizzy. The crimson river constantly flew. He was sitting in the small pool of blood now.

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Maybe I should hate Professor Gast, too, just like I hate everybody else. I would have been blissfully ignorant if it hadn't been for him. He told me what love is, showed me that people can be kind, not always screaming, not always wreaking their rage upon me, getting into temper at my every remark or any single thing I do… I definitely didn't need that knowledge. For now I realize what I am missing. No comparison, nothing to feel sorry about, it's as simple as that. …And now I see how… how horrible all those people are… how different they could have been…

Or wait… Do I really know this? Maybe Daniel was some exception? The one and only nice person in this world?

His head was spinning.

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Has the gravity suddenly changed? the boy thought, fighting of his weariness. The floor was pulling him even harder into its steel embrace.

He lowered his hands in order to support himself. Instead of touching the familiar cold floor, his fingertips met a warm liquid. He dipped them into the sticky substance, forcing himself to reopen his eyes. Not wanting to fall flat on his face all of a sudden, he knew he would have to lay down pretty soon.

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Some sense of dignity,he smirked. _I have no dignity left, if I ever had any. I am everybody's toy. Phew. I'm getting too emotional over this…_

He was as weak as a kitten now. His limbs finally gave up and he gracefully fell on his side; his body curled into a gentle arch. He couldn't move his legs anymore, but his vision was still good, so he kept looking at the opposite wall. The one with the crimson imprint on it. The stain had somehow formed a perfect shape; the exact shape of a weeping willow.

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See? I'm an artist, Sephiroth thought with some dark sense of humor.

His eyes slowly closed. The boy smiled.

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So it finally ends, then? I almost can't believe that I've really made it… but I don't regret… anything… I've been… a burden… all my life… so everyone's… going to be… happy… now… It's for the… better…… definitely……

As somebody once wrote, the rest is silence.

Author's note: Thank you very much for reading this story. Please, review. And don't flame my English, since it's not my first language - I merely learn it as a hobby.


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